


Hidden Behind Shirts, Ties, & Marriages

by Ncj700



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha!Hunk, Alpha!Keith, Everyone has boners except the aliens, Gen, He just wants to be a good alpha, Hunk is scared, I miss that word ok?, Its ABO of course there's gonna be lemons, Keith is the purest one here, Kidge - Freeform, Lemons, Multi, Omega!Lance, Omega!Pidge, Pidge got her an alpha she gonna get him, Pidge takes no quarter, Porn, Sarcasm and humour., Where did the slow burn come from?, a/b/o dynamics, alphas are basically bower birds, get your adorable fuckboy scent away from her man, hunk's knot is crying, it should not be this difficult to get laid, lance - Freeform, screw weak omega tropes, she rip your face off, shiro is done, so lets make some Kidge lemonade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-06-27 21:13:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ncj700/pseuds/Ncj700
Summary: The hunt is on, and Katie would kindly like to ask Allura’s permission to reconfigure the castleship air conditioning once it’s over. First however, she has an Alpha to find. Pity nobody else seems to agree with that plan. The smutty ABO AU a few people were keen for on the Kidge Discord.





	1. It's A Human Trait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuceCiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuceCiel/gifts), [DarkAdrenaline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkAdrenaline/gifts).



> '[Savages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaTAFXgykU)' by Marina and The Diamonds is the ABO trope in song form and no-one can convince me otherwise.

The castleship had never been designed with humans in mind. It was hard to remember that sometimes, even with the upside-down swimming pools and the fact that they were in space.

Sometimes people just got so used to habit, routine, and the idea of something functioning in a certain way, that no heed was paid when those patterns altered. The cause of Katie’s distress wasn’t the first thing that would come to mind, but it was something all the humans on the ship had unconsciously paid little attention to.

Really, they should have asked about the air conditioning, but who had the time? Hunk? He was helping Coran repair the ship, and trying to find alternative and more nutrias food sources, since unlike the Alteans, humans were omnivorous beings that required meat. The food goo needed adjusting if they didn’t want malnutrition.

Lance? He was helping Coran too, working on an inventory list. Keith, she knew was busy working one something with the fighting droids, and some research in the castle archives, so he too was distracted. Shiro was focusing their training schedules, and processing a world without scent. He wouldn’t have noticed that the spread of scent around the castle.

She really ought to have noticed it herself when she started feeling that lethargy, the ultimate desire to never move, yet the restlessness beneath that always accompanied the human breeding cycle. She even snapped at Hunk a few times. And there was always the ravenous food binge, like she wasn’t going to eat again.

For a week straight, Hunk had to chase her away from his meal preparations almost every day because she kept sneaking down for ration. She put it down to the fact that Keith’s idea of training was just a lot harsher and physically demanding than Shiro’s was.

Then Hunk let out an inhuman screech that sounded like the attack call of a snick, pulling every one of them out of their rest day morning lie in. Once a movement, they were allowed to sleep inceptions were made after fierce battles, but in general, they were afforded this simple luxury once, and only once a week.

To be woken from universally treasured morning, was extremely irritating even to the Alteans, who required less sleep than their human companions. For Katie, waking up made her grump on the best of days. Waking up early, made her irritated, and combined with the missing alpha who’d been indulging her recent need for attention, her irritation became a foul kind of irritation that leeched into her scent.

“It was an accident I swear!” Hunk insisted frantic and more worried than she had seen him since battling the robeast on the Balmera. “I just wanted some food and I caught a new scent one the way to the kitchen, so I just got curious!”

“What the quiznak are you shouting about Hunk?” Allura yawned, coming out the lift with her long hair sticking in several directions. “I could hear you up in my room, and its two floors away from the paladin suites!”

“Yes, please tell me what was so horrifying that you had to wake us up at 0600 to share in your terror,” Lance grumbled, trying and failing not yawn through his words. “Dude, if this isn’t less than Zarkon-came-back-from-the-dead-again levels of terrifying, I’m going back to bed.”

Shiro looked no better, and Katie honestly wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t standing sleeping with his eyes open. They’d all become experts at sleeping in strange places.

She’d found Keith curled up next to knocked down gladiator, Hunk napping beside the dishwasher absorbing the warmth through the metal like a cat, and Lance on the Blue Lion’s head, just to name a few, and she’d lost track of how many times she had fallen asleep in the engine bay.

“It’s not bad, I swear, but I guess it is, because it means… but I don’t understand why our scents haven’t been filtered!” Hunk said, rambling and occasionally poking his head around the corner of the hall. He looked like he wanted to cry.

“Hunk, why don’t you take a breath and tell us what’s going on?” Shiro asked, so blearily, Katie _knew_ he’d been sleeping right there in the hallway.

Hunk shook his head and pointed around the corner of the hallway. “Pidge, it’s not mine, I swear!” He said in a conspiratorial sort of whisper, holding his arms up when the others tried to follow her, preventing them from following. “I promise, I’m not trying to declare a challenge over you!”

Desperate to get whatever was going on over with so she could copy Lance and go back to bed, or go snuggle in Keith’s, Katie followed Hunk’s directions and glanced around the corner. It was mostly just closed rooms, but she figured he meant the open door to the one she had claimed.

It was mainly working on her coding and repairing some of the smaller digital components Coran and Lance had found, or making replacements for the broken ones. Full of junk usually, but no longer was that the only thing inside it.

There, in the centre of the room was the beginnings of a nest. It was nothing more than a few pillows and a couple of blankets, only the base of one like the ones her mother started with when she was building a nest for her father, but it was the beginnings of a nest all the same.

Outlined in a circle of metallic trinkets and scraps that had been carefully taken from her work benches and placed gently around the early construction, marking the area clearly. There were bits of broken gladiator droids too. And her old laptop that had been scrapped for data and parts before being replaced by an Altean model.

She quickly ran back around the corner, her mind going into overdrive. “Allura, does the air conditioning system filter our scents?” She blurted as soon as she had reached the others again.

“No, I don’t believe so?” The princess blinked. “Altean scent perception is much more limited in comparison to human noses, Coran has a theory that it why our cuisine seemed to disagree with human taste buds.”

“Wait, so our scents have been broadcast around the whole ship?” Hunk panicked. “Oh god, no wonder I started getting used to sleeping in the kitchen! I have blankets in there! I’m nesting too!”

“There’s a bigger problem than just sleeping in the kitchen,” Shiro frowned, suddenly a lot more alert. “This could send you and Keith into early ruts, or start Lance and Pidge’s…” he paused, then looked to her. “Pidge, what was it that Hunk found?”

Katie couldn’t help the whine. “There’s a nest in my workroom…” she said, wringing the hem of her shirt.

A pin would have been heard if it dropped as her words brought the scent issue to a whole new level of problematic, namely because it meant three things.

Firstly, that Hunk, one of the two alphas on the team, had found an unusual mix of scents and subsequently discovered a nest in a space clearly designated as her territory, that was not his own.

That meant their scents were being shared between each other in a way that simply didn’t happen in human buildings, because of scent filtering technology that had evolved when human biological intolerance to suppressants started to increase. It meant they were being exposed to each other’s instincts on a subliminal level.

That Hunk had been the one to find the nest first was also a problem. If the builder found his scent around it, it would be taken as a challenge. There was only one other alpha on the team, and Katie had been lightly encouraging his claim on her for a few months now. Hunk intruding on Keith’s unfinished nest was almost a declaration of war as far as instincts were concerned.

Lastly, the fact that Keith, an alpha she was exchanging trinkets with, had built her a nest inside her territory meant one thing, and one thing only. Katie couldn’t have stopped him from doing it, because he was only reacting to her hormones, ones she hadn’t even noticed approaching.

“My last heat was just before I joined the Garrison,” she choked. “…I think I’m going into season.”

Lance stared at her, his face paling rapidly as he reached the conclusion and source of Hunk’s panic. “Oh, this is bad, if we’ve synced up-” Lance let out a whine of his own. “I just had a heat the week before we left, but if our scents are mixing we’re going to need emergency suppressants or something!”

“Keith is going to kill me,” Hunk whimpered. “He’s going to hunt me down as soon as he catches my scent on the door buttons!”

Katie wanted to tell Hunk he had nothing to worry about but… Keith was _very_ in touch with his instincts. Most of the time it was harmless, but she’s had to drag him out of the room to keep him from launching himself at Ulaz when he was first released from the cells. More than once she’d seen him hounding any poor Galra, who’d made the mistake of trying to shoot her while he was in the vicinity, with his bayard and blade alike.

She didn’t think he’d hurt Hunk, but at the same the chance of a negative reaction to an alpha approaching her territory was high. She knew she had ways to counteract that though.

“Should I scent it now?” She asked Hunk. She knew he’d shared and built a couple of nests before.

“Absolutely not!” Hunk nearly shrieked. “It’s not finished yet right? If you try to claim it before he’s finished, it’d be like…. _No_ , no, way, definitely a bad idea! If someone scented a nest I hadn’t finished yet I’d be so offended? It’d be like they didn’t believe I could make a good one so wanted to settle for something half-assed! And this isn’t a normal one!”

Shiro nodded and she bit her lip. That was a point well made. She really out to have paid more attention in their dynamics classes but had used the computer time to hack into the garrison computers instead.

“Wait, where is Keith?” Allura asked. “I’m not entirely certain I’m keeping up, but this to do with your human social dynamics yes? Or is it your reproductive process?”

“Both, and I don’t know. I know he was with me when I went to sleep… he’s been more attentive lately so we’ve been sharing rooms a lot,” Katie replied.

It had been wonderful actually. She’d felt warm and safe and whenever she felt uncomfortable all she’d had to do was turn and nuzzle gently at Keith glands, croon to him, and his scent oozed around them as he pulled her snug in his arms, nibbled gently at her neck, like he was preparing a promise of the bond-mark she’d wear if she accepted his court.

She’d been keening and purring into languid kisses and draping herself around him, familiarising herself a little more with the tiny dark purple freckles on his shoulders, how fluffy and fur-like his hair felt against her fingers, its silkiness that put Lance’s haircare products to shame. His growls and rumbles of appreciation for her attention hadn’t gone unheard.

She dimly remembered keening in his arms, moaning into his graze of his tongue on her lips as whatever stimulation he’d given her had settled the stings and ache of what she now knew had been preheat pains. Then, hormones happy with the attention of a capable alpha, she must have fallen asleep.

She felt lucid and clear, if still slightly aroused, enough to keep shifting her stance, trying not to rub her legs together. The discomfort was gone, but so was Keith. Upon waking, she’d whined in displeasure and now she knew why. Her alpha was making sure her needs for her heat were met, and if that didn’t make her heat burn a little brighter in her belly, what else would? Why was he gone?

Now that she thought about it more, that ought to have been a warning sign. “Oh no, that means he’s been getting an overdose of my heat scent, doesn’t it?” She asked. There was no reply, but the question didn’t need it - she already knew that was exactly what had happened. It also meant that she’d was probably already addicted to Keith’s own rut scent, but again, that went without saying.

“He has to be awake, because that nest was not there yesterday when I came to bring Pidge the repairs from the turbine consoles,” Hunk said.

Katie was chewing her lip as she wandered past the others to Keith’s room, and started typing in his key code. As the door slid open, she had to grab hold of the doorframe to stop herself from collapsing to the floor and presenting her neck for claiming right there and then.

The strong scent of _alpha_ and _hers_ and the musky smell of rut. _Keith_. It bombarded her nose, thick swathes of it flowing out of the room and surrounding her senses like a blanket, soothing the irritating itch she hadn’t realised was starting under her skin. The purr of approval that it prompted was clear as anything.

“Okay, so, I guess that answers the question as to whether Keith is in rut or not,” Hunk choked.

Katie ignored him, still investigating Keith’s room with her eyes and nose. Dimly she noticed that her favourite blanket, the one she insisted they use if she slept in his room, was gone. Was he putting into his nest? The implication was intimate, but her purrs were deeper, almost rumbles of approval.

Lance made a strangled noise, and rapidly started pulling his pyjama shirt over his mouth and nose. “Wow, that is really strong. No wonder Pidge is out of it, I’m getting _itchy_ ,” he groaned, shifting uncomfortably.

Hearing words, the happy purrs in her throat pitched, and a glare from her eyes coupled with sound gave the older omega a caustic warning. Lance very quickly angled his neck and whined, hiding behind Hunk, and the reticence submission dulled her displeasure on sight of his glands. She still watched him though.

“I’ll say it is, I can actually smell something,” Shiro said, emerging from his room in a loose shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms instead of his boxers, unobtrusively standing between her and Lance. “I’m surprised, but you really can’t smell _anything?_ ” He asked the Altean woman.

“Does it matter?” Hunk asked. “Keith is in rut, loose god knows where on the ship probably looking for more nest materials like a rabid racoon, Pidge is going into heat, probably in the next few hours if her reaction to Keith’s scent is anything to go by - and if we don’t get that aircon reconfigured to filter our scents out of the air, Lance and I are probably next! I don’t wanna bone my best friend!”

“I second that, our relationship is too pure for that level of carnality,” Lance piped up in agreement, still hiding behind the alpha.

Allura still looked tired, and now perplexed. Katie suspected they’d have to give her a fresh explanation of human dynamics again but she seemed to understand that if they didn’t do something, then the absolute fuck-up of a shitstorm that would hit them would make fighting Zarkon look as peaceful as their now distant memory of a morning lie-in.

“If it is truly so worrying, then Coran and I will do whatever we can to help you,” she promised. “But for starters I suggest we find Keith. If he is in this state of ‘ _rut_ ’ as you call it, I assume it is unwise to let him roam the castle?”

“It depends on who finds him, and how far into his rut he is,” Shiro said. “They were always pretty strong even with the air filtration back home. He’d growl at me sometimes so there’s no way to be sure if he wouldn’t attack anyone who got too close. The garrison had to sedate him once.”

“Holy crap, seriously?” Lance choked. “That’s insane. Hot, but insane. Isn’t that, like, the embodiment of the crazy feral alpha movie trope?”

Katie preened and purred, instinct screaming in approval of the missing alpha. Keith. Sinew, muscle and whip-like strength, prime, and ready and willing to provide. Her alpha. She let her scent waft out too, the scent of her own mixed with said alpha, remind Lance of just who he had directed his attentions and court towards.

Still, despite his unpleasant fascination with her alpha, Lance asked a very good question. Where _was_ Keith? He should come back. He should have her scent if he was building a nest for her. Rumbling to herself, she let a bit of scent out, hoping it would draw him back. She didn’t notice the others giving her worried looks, or Coran slowly trying to get between her and the door to the Red suite.

“If he’s looking for ‘ _nesting materials_ ’ maybe Lance could gather some up in a pile to lure him out while you guys help Pidge get set up? He seems the most lucid for the task, and he won’t be affected by Keith’s scent like Pidge is, yes? Since he’s also an omega, would that not be suitable?” She suggested.

Coran had managed to edge her away from the room and come the doors, but Keith’s scent was still intermingled with Katie’s nose, and while she could detect her own scent amongst it, it wasn’t nearly strong enough to be reassuring on the verge of a heat. Being female, her scent was slightly different to Lance’s, not as boisterous or easy to identify. Some might say weaker, and she curled her lip back in anger.

Allura’s words made her eyes snap towards Lance, again, an older, more mature omega who had shared his heats before, who knew more, and had made comments that suggested a reaction to the alpha’s scent. His scent mixed with Keith’s in her nose, and she didn’t even bother to try stop the feral hiss that crawled from her tongue into the air. That scent had no business being anywhere near that of her alpha, and she voiced her displeasure loudly, insistently, and with venom.

Coran caught her by the waist before the yowl and snarls in her throat could carry her across the hall towards Lance. “Whoa there number five!” He wheezed, holding her tight even as she snarled and struggled, trying to get past him to the other omega, to prove that she was more than capable of standing up and supporting her alpha’s claim. To fight. To tear the foreign omega sniffing around him into the ground.

Lance, for his part, squeaked in alarm and shook his head at Allura, violently, baring his glands for her again. “Oh no, nope, no way, you think two alphas at odds is bad?” He asked holding his arms up in an ‘ _X_ ’ shape. “Hell no, me, go looking for another omega’s alpha when they’re both in season? Not a chance, I’m not going looking for the mullet, Pidge would make a blanket out of my skin for Greenie’s cockpit!”

Pidge growled, still snarling in Coran’s arms, wishing had little fangs like Keith to truly intimidate, and dare anyone to even try coming near _her_ alpha.

Lance was pulling his hair out with his hands, and Hunk looked like he had no idea who to be scared of more - Katie or the feral alpha roaming the castle somewhere - as he tried to shield his friend from her view. Allura seemed even more alarmed than before, and Shiro was clearly still wondering why this couldn’t all have waited till later in the morning.

* * *

 

Keith, if he’d been blessed with the gift of foresight, probably wouldn’t have spent the night in Pidge’s room. However, he did not have that power, and so when Katie crooned and trilled in protest when he made for his own room, he didn’t bat an eyelid.

He was more than content to curl up with her. Her scent was light and blissful, getting a little stronger and potent, but warm and gentle and fierce, just like her. He would have followed her even without the invitation, and its implications.

When Katie grumpily snuggled close muttering about aching glands, he responded as any decent alpha with a prospective court partner would have. He eased his own scent out to her, letting the weight of his body on hers help it stick as his lips and teeth and tongue slipped against her neck, careful not to mark just yet, but settling her discomfort with a stronger claim.

Tiny as her form was - yet strong and resilient in its ownership - he could not draw his attention from her. Her scent was beckoning, nothing but encouraging. He knew his efforts to please her were successful, and the kisses she rewarded him with, slow and deep, were driving his mind to wonder, to imagine, to fantasise.

Then, later when she was more content, and draped her tiny form over his chest, nuzzling to his own glands, returning the attention and pressing her body close, he realised what was happening.

Rut. He was going into rut. His mind and pheromones had matched the amazing omega girl in perfect synchronicity, and anything she wanted, needed, or didn’t know to ask for as her heat began to fall into her bones, he would have absolutely no qualms or options but to obey.

Katie sighed contentedly, purring as one of her hands moved up his chest, creasing the fabric of his shirt and living a thin line of warmth through his torso in her wake. A little trill, and the press of her leg on his thigh as she angled herself as close to his body as she could, started the heat in his groin, and the full force of the hormonal state.

This omega was content with him. His attention and care were satisfactory, approved of, and he had to ensure she was cared for to the fullest of his ability before her own vulnerable state increased tenfold. He would ensure she would be comfortable, and any other alpha or beta that tried to intrude, or caused her distress, would not do so without retribution as long as she had made her approval clear.

Before he could work on this however, he had to make sure she was comfortable. The pangs of pain right now were only a precursor, a preparation for the more intense and constant full heat that was sure to claim her soon, and while his didn’t think about the reason how it worked, or why, Keith knew that his cent and presence would soothe her, and help her rest before that period arrived.

Gently, he took her chin in one hand, slowly pressing kisses first against the well-claimed glands on her neck, up the hollow of her throat, her breath warming and hitching in his ear.

Pre-heat pains were sharp points of arousal, designed to prepare and help warm the body muscles before the heat itself. There were quick, so dismissed as simple discomfort when no alpha or beta was around to help with their own scent. However, with a partner, those pangs were easily remedied, and lucid, Keith could have easily explained to the Alteans why alpha scent and encouraged arousal helped omegas relax before their heat, and were one of the healthiest ways to deal with heats.

However, he was not lucid. His instinctual brain couldn’t have explained any of that. He simply knew that the quiet keens from Pidge were full approval of his attention to her with a growl of his own pleasure. His instincts crowing with delight at the scent of happy, content, aroused omega Pidge was exuding, he dug his hand into her hair, angling her lips and press a knee between her legs, letting her press and twist, her frustrated, desperate cries dropping onto his tongue between fervent kisses.

Her demands indicated that more of the amorous attention would be welcomed, and - still listening for warning growls, just in case, they were not after all in court yet - he nipped his teeth just above her scent gland, steadying her against his hips with one hand on her waist, and reaching below, grazing her clit through her underwear with the other, pressing the fabric against her, letting the friction build her tension.

She cried out with gasps and moans, and one of those trills that was bit deeper, bit more feral, arching her neck, displaying, inviting, and he hand to growl and snarl in her ear to keep himself from biting down on her offering as Pidge ground her hips, pressing against his fingers, searching for a peak in her arousal.

Even though it wasn’t a bond or mate mark, the proximity his bite to her glands was enough, and with a few more deliberate presses of his fingers, rolling her clit back and forth under the pressure until she clung and clawed her nails into his shoulders, legs tensing around his hips as she shuddered and cried out through her orgasm.

Rolling onto his back so Pidge could slump more comfortably against his shoulder, he let her catch her breath as he checked her over, trying to smell any more discomfort on her, but she seemed sated and content, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead as she began to doze.

The tang and salt in the air wasn’t quite the scent of slick, but it was definitely getting stronger. Her heat was fast approaching, and so would need a nest for it, and he couldn’t shirk the responsibility to another alpha. The mere thought made him growl and bare his fangs.

A nest. He needed to build her a nest. So, once she was sleeping, and he was sure she was getting the rest she required, he slipped out of bed and out into the hall.

It didn’t take him long to find the best spot for one, or even to start the make the base, but he needed clean, unscented materials for the rest of it. He had used one of his own blankets, so to be sure she knew it was his nest, but any more personal items would be rude.

After he left workroom, heading to the upper decks for the laundry room and unused bedrooms, where he was bound to find some good materials, he didn’t catch Hunk’s scent as his door opened.

Later, when he returned, and found the traces of the fellow alpha’s scent on the doorway to Pidge’s workshop – the nest site – he felt his shoulders tense with the growl being in his throat. After carefully hiding the fresh nest components, he sniffed the area, searching for anyone who might be intruding, only to find something much, much more alarming.

Pidge’s heat scent lingered in the air, and she was gone.

* * *

 

Eventually, they decided on a plan.

Or rather, there was a plan decided, and Katie had dubious choice in it because her heat-fired lizard brain was starting to take over.

Shiro and the Alteans would take turns watching Katie, switching every so often to pair up and try and find Keith, and lure him back to his nest with offerings of nesting materials. Lance and Hunk meanwhile were tasked with finding a way to reconfigure the air conditioning and stop a deluge of heat and rut scents befalling them all.

Katie was not fond of this plan, at all.

' _…have to be careful, Coran. I think Katie’s imprinted on Keith for this heat already. They’ve been so close it’s a miracle they’re apart at all._ ’

“It’s not started yet?” The Altean man blinked.

‘ _No,_ ’ Shiro’s voice crackled back anxiously. ‘ _It’s just preheat, when our bodies give off scents to attract a partner for heats and ruts. Since Keith is on the verge of asking to court her, Pidge will be looking for him, right up till her heat starts. We don’t know what they’ve talked about or agreed to so it’s important to try and keep them separate for now. At least until we find Keith and can ask him. He should still be clearer headed than Pidge is._ ’

"And if not?" Coran asked.

' _Then we have a bigger problem._ '

Right now, she was in the med bay, pacing back and forth as Coran tried to tempt her into one of the cryopods. She had stared at him for a moment, then hissed, and promptly made herself comfy on one of the beds instead, with no intents of moving.

There were packets of supplies beside her on one of the tables, but she wasn’t at all convinced about accepting help on sourcing her food and water supplies from someone else. It didn’t feel right. Keith was her alpha. Not fully, not yet, but she was hopeful and excited, and she didn’t want to potentially scare him off by accepting food from another alpha.

Especially not an alpha who had intruded on Keith’s nest. Even if it was just Hunk, who had meant no harm. That would be disgusting, insulting behaviour to his attention, and intended court.

In the end, the only reason she hadn’t growled at Hunk and thrown the water and goo packets at him in dismissal was because Allura took over and gave them to her instead. And even then, Katie staunchly refused to take them into her room.

Keith was building her a nest. It was one of the most important things an alpha could do for an omega (besides the uses of their knots). Even if she didn’t share her heat with him, the construction of a nest was a sign of support, of willingness to commitment, and care.

When it finally came, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that she was going to accept a courting request from Keith. When he finally asked her (why hadn’t he asked her?). Like hell she was spending her heat in the green paladin’s suite.

No, she was going to wait until Keith was done. If she had to roll around outside her tech room stinking up the hallway to do that, then that was what she would do, waiting beside her supplies to inspect, and the accept the nest.

That was her plan anyway, but it was harder to put into practice than she had first thought. She kept getting distracted by the scents still wafting around the castle, and so far, no clear solution had been found apart from someone keeping her company at all times.

Which led her to getting away from Coran. The fresh wave of scent gave her new motivation however, and she keened. Nobody trusted her not to go hunt down her missing alpha, and she was starting to get agitated.

She wasn’t that hazed out yet. She _was_ resisting the urge to call out for Keith, try and lure him to her – she was in heat, why wasn’t he here? What if Hunk changed his mind and tried to challenge his claim for her after all? – or roam the castle and follow his scent to wherever it led her, but she was starting to hurt and ache.

They hadn’t discussed Heats or Ruts yet. It was a taboo topic until an official court request was voiced and accepted. But she missed Keith’s scent, wanted it close, wanted it to wrap around her, plunge into, caress her skin, her senses over and over until her glands couldn’t help but mimic it. She wanted his touches back, like the ones from the previous night.

The comfort of a nest, carefully crafted by the attentive alpha, and security of Keith’s brash, aggressive scent, strong enough to ward off even the scentless, called out to her, and she desperately needed to find him, bask in it as it held her close and burned away the fire in her core, and as her eyes wandered with her fantasy, she caught a scent on the air that made the warmth in her belly ache a little more.

Watching as Coran spoke to one of the other paladins over the video frequency, she silently slipped off the bed and after a quick glance around the room, found her escape route. The very place where Keith’s scent was coming from.

Keening again, she made use of the shelves, and carefully, silently as Shiro and Coran continued talking, clambered up to the air vents right next to the aircon.

She was well into the vents before she heard Coran’s horrified yelp of ‘ _Quiznak!_ ’.

* * *

Alternatively titled ' _how to write a one shot then add drama and minor plot to what is supposed to be straight up ABO Fluffy Porn_ '  ~~this was not supposed to have chapters, why~~

For the enablers, [KDXArt](https://kdxart.tumblr.com) and [LuceCiel](http://luce-ciel.tumblr.com), without whom I would have been lazy enough to never write this ~~because too many ideas is exhaustive and intimidating~~ <3 Also if you're interested KDXArt has also made [some gorgeous art that comes from the same challenge](https://kdxart.tumblr.com/post/177017484128/so-we-came-up-with-a-smut-challenge-in-the-kidge), and by hell you can bet I'm using it for inspiration


	2. I Am Afraid of Man

Shiro turned off his communicator after Coran had come back to the console to tell them the bad news with only a slight whine. He had erroneously thought yet again that things wouldn’t get worse, and once again he was wrong. He could feel the back of his neck heating up with frustration, and had to take a few breaths to calm down before explaining to Allura what had happened,

Pidge had escaped and that complicated matters significantly. For one thing, she had access to means of travel that Shiro and Allura did not - that being the vents, as well as head start, and a working nose that would help her track down her target much faster that his dodgy one.

A ping came through on the comm system, and he frowned as a map of the vents and the castleship appeared on his wrist, with several blobs of thermal energy. Pidge was easy to work out given that she was working her way to the other side of this floor, and the vents were clearly marked between levels.

He could hazard a guess that Hunk was down in the engine bay, close to the supply rooms as he hopefully tinkered with the air filtration system, but Lance, Keith and Coran he couldn’t pick out. Apparently Alteans didn’t register on thermal imaging the same way, and the system was currently coded to humans for obvious reasons.

So their only contact with Coran was when they started a direct comm-link, and due to the limitations of the thermal tracking, Shiro had no idea which of the blobs left unspoken were Lance or Keith.

Absently, feeling a restless itch under his skin, like it was covered in sand, he scratched at his glands and looked to Allura with a hopeful look. “I don’t suppose there’s any way of finding them faster?” he asked gently, looking at the heat signature Coran had downloaded onto their data pads so they could semi-follow Pidge as she made her way through the vents.

“We could have used Paladin suits if they were wearing them, but like this, heat signatures are the best way since you can’t track them by scent,” Allura sighed as they walked along the hallways of the castleship. “We’re just going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, floor by floor.

“Somehow, I was afraid you would say that,” Shiro sighed, following the princess despite his worries.

“I understand your worry, in a sense,” Allura smiled putting a hand on his arm, her skin very cool against his own. “I imagine it’s difficult to know how to proceed when you can’t read a situation the same way as before.”

It took him a moment to work out what she meant, and he took long enough trying to figure it out that he nearly walked into the corner of the hallway going along towards where Keith was hopefully squirrelling his supplies from.

“I suppose,” Shiro said, touching his nose-scar with a robotic finger. “But there are upsides too. Before I was caught up by the influences from scent, but now, I can be more objective. In some ways, it’s probably a benefit given the challenge we have out here. No, I can’t interact with the others the same way, but even if I can’t smell it, my own scent hasn’t changed, and there are visual and verbal clues to our interactions too,” he smiled.

The others had been particularly attentive in making sure he knew he was still considered the pack leader, going to extra lengths to make it obvious hen they wanted Shiro to scent them, or do so in return. They used more growls and trills and whines, exaggerated their movements a little for his sake. It was nice.

He couldn’t afford to get distracted however. They had to find Pidge and Keith, before they found each other. Shiro was proud of them both for how they’d been handling their not-quite-but-almost-official courting, and he didn’t want either of them to get hurt because of a lapse in biology and lack of observation for human environmental needs across the whole team.

And so, Shiro pressed on with Allura down the corridors, his nerves flaring beneath his skin as they drew closer and closer to their first target.

“I must say, even though I’ve seen you sharing nest with each other in the lounge, and scenting each other, when you first explained your reproductive process to me, I didn’t expect them to be this…”

“Savage?” Shiro suggested with a laugh as Allura floundered over the word. “I wish I could say this is the worst it can get, but I’m afraid not. I just hope you don’t have to witness that princess.”

As they made their way along the corridor, he could hear the shuffling of feet and according to the tracked the person just a few corridors away had left the room and was heading in their direction. Quickly holding a hand up to Allura so he could check their positions again, he glanced back down at his locator, only to find red warning signs flashing on the screen.

“What the… I can’t access the comms,” he frowned. “Is this right? Have I pressed something by accident?” He asked Allura - while all of them had picked up basic Altean to some extent simply by repetition thanks to the lions, only Pidge and Hunk had any real fluency.

Allura glanced at the small computer screen, tapping a few of the buttons. “Somethings wrong,” She frowned. “We’ve been locked out of the castles communication system, but I can’t figure out why.”

Shiro stared at the screen, then at Allura. “So, we have no idea where anyone is,” he sighed.

“It would seem so.”

Shiro pinched his nose again; he really, really wished he hadn’t woken up this morning.

* * *

 

If someone were to ask Hunk what he thought he’d be doing in space in the midst of an intergalactic war, he didn’t think he would have replied with ‘ _performing regular maintenance on alien environmental technology_ ’ but that was what he was doing.

He was in the engine bay, looking through the computer panels and half sticking out of one of the lower ducts to access the interface, all the while being blasted with the scents of everyone on his team, including Pidge’s heat scent and that of Keith’s rut.

Not only were Hunk’s cargo shorts having an unexpected and painful party (his knot was _killing_ him), he wasn’t having much luck with the Altean air filtration system. He couldn’t redirect the scent, because it had been in the air so long now it was all over the castleship, and if he turned it off, they’d all die of suffocation. Which wasn’t exactly an ideal solution to the instinctive need to fuck anything that walked his way, despite what his dick was telling him.

As it turned out, Altean technology was advanced in many ways, but considering their senses were nowhere near as high-tuned as human ones were (or was the correct term Terran now that they were in space?), their air conditioning system was, frankly, awful by human standards.

It had absolutely no adaptations for scent removal of any kind, probably because their own use of nasal receptors was so low and they simply didn’t need that kind of assistance. Then again for a peaceful ambassadorial type race, surely they had encountered beings with similar needs? Like the Galra?

Tapping his earpiece, he brought up a channel with the med bay. “Coran is there any way you can send me the schematics for the-” he paused, listening to the channel, then frowned. Instead of getting through to Coran though, he was just getting static.

That was weird. Last he’d been aware, Coran was watching Pidge in the med-bay, just in case they needed to… he wasn’t exactly sure. Sedate her or something? Hunk shook his head, trying very much to ignore the tent in his pants from all the crazy scents in the air, and turned back to his task.

All this information meant several things. One was that for the first time ever, he was disappointed in Altean engineering. Even if it was ten thousand years out of date by universal standards it was still more advanced than Earth tech, and he’d honestly been expecting _something_ rudimentary, even just to start with.

That in turn meant he would have to construct new filtration technology, and fit it to the Altean tech somehow. Which would take a few days, and there was no guarantee that it would work (he was an Aerospace Engineer, not a repairman!).

And finally, with no way to filter the air in the next twenty-four hours, the chance of he and Lance also going into season was about sixty-six percent higher than it had been earlier.

Growling in frustration, Hunk let his head flop back against the back of the vent, the metal nice and cool against his flushed skin. All the scent in the air was starting to rile him up, and that was not a good sign. He was starting to hear things too. The vent itself was echoing, and even his own breathing was making it give off weird sounds.

“Hey guys?” He tried, moving to the ship wide comm-system instead. “Is anybody there?”

It too was full of static and screeching, getting louder and louder until it was far too much for his sensitive ears to tolerate, and felt more like someone was sticking a red-hot poker into them and using them to cauterise his nose. Quickly stopping the call and pulling out his earpiece, he whined and massaged his ears, curling up and trying to will the piercing ache travelling through his head, his sinuses, away.

Despite his swimming vision and aching ears, he could still form some thought, and he wanted to swear. That sound was one he knew, a human one. Ancient as hell, but he remembered it from his technological history class. It was freaking _dial-up_ noise! Why on earth was he hearing dial-up in space?

As something banged above his head, Hunk cringed, then twisted and once he’d recovered a bit more, shuffled further in along the chute to double check, wincing at the discomfort as he wriggled along.

“This is not the morning I was planning on,” he muttered to himself grumpily, curling up around his groin and whining as a shift at just the wrong angle made his balls and knot contract and protest hideously. “Stupid alien air conditioning,” he muttered, reaching another vent.

This one gave him pause for thought though. It was at a crossing of ducts, veering off to the left and turning around, back towards the lions’ hangar. There, in the metal, was a disjointed console, flashing red error warnings.

Shuffling closer, he found that the console had been tampered with. The communication systems had been completely shut down, or rather, from what his attempt to hack back in and fix the problem showed, interaction between the paladins had been blocked, which explained why he couldn’t get through to Coran.

A thump and crash of metal further along the vent made him squeak in surprise, but with the blast of fresher air, a stronger scent was blown through the chute towards him, and Hunk choked, his hand going to cover his mouth and nose.

Pidge. That was Pidge. Pidge, who was supposed to be in the med bay with Coran, was roaming around the vents. At least it meant she was still relatively lucid. If her heat had fully hit there was no way she’d have the energy to scuffle around in the vents, but it did worry him.

It meant she was getting desperate, and the scent ahead of him as he awkwardly made his way in her direction was proof.

The smell of stress, anxious, unhappy omega was mixing in with the calmer pre-heat scent that had been giving his dick an aneurism, and while he knew it probably wasn’t a good idea, he had to make sure she was okay.

What kind of Alpha would he be if he just abandoned one of his pack mates when they were so very clearly distressed. He didn’t even want to share her heat – despite his body’s reaction to the scent. He just wanted to help. To make sure she was comfortable, anything to make that horrible distressed scent go away.

Reaching the end of the vent, he pulled himself out as predicted into the lion’s hangar, flopping onto the floor, basking in its coolness on his now heated skin for a moment. This was not good. That scent he’d picked up in the vents had probably been fresher if Pidge had been close by.

He was probably going into rut. Maybe. It was an extremely high possibility depending on how much time he spent around Pidge. Looking around the hangar he couldn’t see her anywhere, but he could definitely smell her.

The air was full of scent, but it was easier to judge her location now, and on quiet feet, he managed to come around the edge of Green’s front paws, where Pidge had set up a work area with a sleeping bag and a mattress from one of the unused rooms weeks ago.

She was grumbling, and her scent was stronger on her now. It was no longer a ‘ _pre-_ ’ and more of a ‘ _heat_ ’ one as she worked away on one of her many laptops.

He didn’t know what she was doing, but she smelled worried, and gently, trying not to startle her, Hunk let some of his scent a little more. Just to let her know he was there. She stopped abruptly, her head whipping in his direction with an uncertain growl in her throat.

Once again, he let a little bit of scent out. He couldn’t possibly leave here by herself. What if her heat hit? He could practically smell it already! What if she didn’t find Keith? All these thoughts were the main ones in his head as he purred at her soothingly.

He knew his scent was tinged with rut, but if he could get her to come back with him to where Keith had built his nest for her, then she’d be safe. From what, Hunk had no idea, but he had the irrational fear that she would be in danger.

Pidge unfortunately, did not share those thoughts, and she snarled again, louder and more vicious this time.

“Hey Pidge…” he said nervously, trying to keep a fair distance from her so she didn’t get too worried or anxious. “How are you?”

She snarled at him, then turned back to the keyboard buttons, her purrs and grumbles echoing around them on the speakers as she settled between green’s paws on the ground, watching him.

Pidge was roosting. She was sitting, conserving her energy, waiting. Waiting for Keith to approach her, with a piece of his nice nest so she could inspect it, and – Hunk was certain – accept any courting offer he asked.

She wasn’t just trying to find Keith, she’d already decided that she wanted to spend her heat with him. She’d probably thought the lion hangar would be clear, safe to wait in without being interrupted.

Glancing at him again from her temporary rest spot, sprawled beside Green, she growled again and Hunk backed away with a high-pitched whine.

The best thing to do was to leave her alone. He knew that, but Pidge was also his friend, and she had no-one else around right now to try and help her stay comfortable.

The nutrient and hydration packs hadn’t gone down well in the kitchen, but he tried again, going to one of the cupboards panels and pulling a few out for her, doing his best to avoid getting his scent all over them.

When he got back, he yelped, seeing her splayed out on her temporary nest. She was lying on her side with her neck arched so that her glands were on display, broadcasting that unmistakeable, thick scent that was giving Hunk’s knot a crisis.

Oh yep, Pidge was definitely in heat. That was a very brazen, open display. Frankly he felt like he was watching something he wasn’t supposed to be - then again nearly all heat/rut messes were like watching someone’s sex tape during the filming.

Still, this wasn’t something he wanted to see! It was freaking private show between Keith and Pidge! Nope, he did not want anything to do with that (no matter how attractive their combines scents would be).

And so, Hunk screwed his eyes shut, but before he did, he noticed something else; the mini-computer on Pidge’s wrist was working, and showing a tracking monitor, with two small red and green icons on it.

As he slid the packets towards her - earning himself a gear and a hiss of warning that he was not welcome when he got too close - Hunk realised something. As Pidge sniffed the air and growled at the packets, as if expecting him to try and offer her nesting materials, Hunk quickly gave her the space she wanted.

She’d hacked into the ship computers so no-one could track her. In heat. If that wasn’t ten levels of terrifying above Zarkon, he had no idea what was.

* * *

Keith sniffed the blankets he’d dug out from the cupboards experimentally, before growling at the smell lingering them, and throwing them into the ‘unsuitable pile’, and turned to the next one instead.

Better, he threw that and the next few into his smaller pile, along and gathered the supplies into his arms.

After sniffing around the nest, he hadn’t been too worried. Hunk’s scent hadn’t been actually on the nest itself, and it was clear that he had simply stumbled across it by accident. His scent was far enough away that it hadn’t contaminated it, so Keith was happy to leave it instead of restarting.

He was a little concerned that Pidge wasn’t in her room, but he’d smelled Allura and Shiro with her, so he wasn’t too worried that she would be uncomfortable. It also gave him time to find more things. He had plenty of blankets, but needed to gather nutrition and hydration packs.

Hurrying back to the nest with the blankets, ones he left aside for Pidge to arrange as needed if she deemed it acceptable, and wanted to make any adjustments, he then made his way along to the kitchen, determined to find the sustenance packs.

The kitchen smelled strongly of Hunk, and Keith could see the beginnings of his nest in one corner, so he made sure to stay clear as he rooted through the cupboards for the human-appropriate packs he’d made up, stuffing them into a large box he acquired in his searches earlier.

As he collected the packets, a sound outside the room caught his ears, and he flinched, grabbing a bunch of packets and shoving them less neatly into the box, and quickly heading for the door. Peering around into the hallway, he couldn’t see anyone but an uncertain grumble remained in his throat, warning anyone passing by not to get too close.

There was a familiar scent in the air, and for a moment he thought it was Pidge, it was definitely an omega scent, but after following for a few moments, he realised the scent was too strong. Then Lance crept out of a side room and froze.

“Oh no,” he groaned.

He took a step towards him and Keith stepped back, growling. He didn’t want this omega to touch the things he’d gathered for his nest. It had to stay free of unwanted scents, especially an omega scent. If he gave Pidge a nest laced with Lance’s scent it would but the ultimate insult.

“Who, okay Mullet, I don’t wanna touch your nest stuff,” Lance said quickly. “But it’s okay, just come this this way, yeah, see, I don’t smell dangerous, do I?”

He didn’t. The omega didn’t smell dangerous, and Keith was inclined to do so simply because there was so much scent of omega and, please, hovering around his nose but Keith wasn’t certain. He wasn’t building a nest for Lance and didn’t want to make him think he was.

“Let’s just talk a little okay? We just need to know if you and Pidge talked about your seasons with each other…” Lance asked, reaching a hand out.

Lies. Lance was always invading peoples personal space. Just because he nested and had territory all over the castle didn’t mean everyone else did. And Keith could smell something on him. It wasn’t quite pre-heat, but his scent was stronger, and that made him uncomfortable.

He didn’t think Lance would be stupid enough to fight with another omega though. Keith was building a nest for Pidge, and Lance coming to close too him might as well be trying to challenge Pidge to a fight.

Pidge couldn’t fight. She was going into heat. It wasn’t good to fight in heat. Not willing to doubt his instincts, Keith growled, and turned to flee back to his nest - Lance wouldn’t dare follow him there - taking a few steps back between his growls, still clutching his treasures.

“Mullet, no, it’s okay, Keith, we’re trying to help you, don’t-! No, no, no, no, no! Don’t run away you crazy feral bower bird!”

Keith snarled in warning, warning the omega to stay back. At the same time Lance reached out again, but as he began to back up in reaction to the growls, he slipped forward instead.

Yelping he grabbed out for whatever was closest, which happened to be Keith. One of the scent glands in his wrist smeared his scent all over Keith neck and the alpha snarled and howled in protest, racing down the corridor.

He had to find Pidge before Lance’s scent got too strong, and now Lance had tried to scent him. He couldn’t afford to let Lance know where he was building his nest.

Behind him Lance banked his fists on the floor in frustration, before getting up to chase.

* * *

 

One of my younger friends who had never heard Dial-up before once described it as the following; ‘ _Space aliens contacting earth with the promise of death, uncomfortable invasive procedures, and general mind fuckery.’_ I’m willing to bet that for a more sensory advanced human like in A/B/O tropes, it was legendary for generating mass chronic earache and disorientation.


	3. We're Just Savages

Shiro peered into one of the castleship’s many rooms and gave it a hopeful sniff, only to slump in defeat.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He could tell that someone had been by recently, but who that might be he had no idea. For all he knew  _ he _ could have been in this room a few weeks ago, and he wouldn’t know by scent. He hadn’t hoped for much from his nose, but he had hoped for something, at least.

“Shiro, I’ve checked all the rooms across the hall,” Allura called from the hallway. “A couple of them were open, but I believe the mess is left over from when we were most recently under attack.”

Looking around the last of the rooms in their current hallway, Shiro could only agree with her, until he caught sight of one cupboard. He might not be able to pick out any scents in the air but he could see through the slight build up of dust, and there were fresh marks on the door.

“I think he’s been in this one,” he called out, calling out to the princess from the hallway and pointing to the marks. “The blankets in here are in a complete mess. These cupboards pack tightly enough they should have been fairly tidy even if everything else has ended up on the floor.”

“Well, that’s a start! Now we just have to figure out which way Keith was going,” Allura said, bright with an encouragement that shiro did his best to mimic. “You said we still had some time, yes?” She asked.

Shiro nodded, scratching the back of his head as he tried to think. “Keith won’t stop building his nest until he’s sure Katie will accept it. I’m not sure how strong their court is - that’s too private to know for sure, but I have a feeling Keith will use his nest to make it an official request for Pidge. He’s not good with people so falling back on traditions makes it easier for him to make himself clear.”

“How much longer do we have?” Allura asked. “I thought you were worried about Pidge going into full heat? If Keith is taking too long won’t that be an issue?”

“Even if her heat starts, we have time to intervene if needed. It’ll take a while to kick in properly, with or without Keith around,” Shiro said. “Do you want me to explain our dynamics in a bit more detail Princess?”

Allura’s face brightened, like a desert that just got a twenty-year rain storm. “That would be most helpful.”

They stepped back out into the hallways, and he took a pause to think of the best place to start.

“So, humans have three different physical presentations as a species, Alphas, Betas and Omegas, and two base sexes, male and female. When combined, that gives us several different variations on how we reproduce. Humans have two primary genders, and three different secondary genders, so in basic biology, we have a basic spectrum of six different sexes…”

* * *

Lance did not sign up for this sort of drama when he passively agreed to the save-the-universe space quest.

He was all for having a good time with his new pack: fighting evil, saving the cosmos, and maybe trying to woo a certain princess along the way. Nobody ever implied that chasing feral alphas or territorial omegas would be part of the deal, and he wanted a refund on this whole shebang.

It was chaos, and honestly, he seriously doubted that if Pidge and Keith wanted to spend her heat together, they could be stopped.

Pidge was a sneaky bitch in the best possible way, even drugged out on heat hormones, and Keith? He was wicked fast and like every alpha in the universe, his need to appease his omega overruled his sanity even when he wasn’t in rut. He was a classic case if ever there was one.

Lance had seen Pidge ask for something, and then in the midst of changing his current activity to ensure her need was met, watched Keith walk into a wall.

Keith, Voltron’s right hand.

The sword fighting guy who had better balance than a cat and enough spatial awareness to be great at crazy fast dancing, had walked into a wall. Because Pidge asked if he could pass her a hydration packet, and he had been trying to find the nearest cupboard.

It was sweet, in a way. Disgustingly sweet. Enough to make Lance a little jealous for a good alpha or beta like that. Heck even an omega. Keith was, despite his disagreements with him, a decent guy, and was currently proving himself a capable potential bondmate. Lance would be blind if he wrote that information off.

Only now he had to chase Keith around the castle and try to stop him from finding Pidge, not just because the first thing the sap of an alpha would do would be present his nest to her, but because once Pidge caught Lance’s scent all over him - however accidental - she might just try to murder him. Pidge, as proven by kitchen arguments over Hunk’s cooking, didn’t like sharing. Not with another omega at least.

Lance understood. Had it not been for the fact that Pidge started sending Keith signals not long after this space farce began, and Keith immediately responded to them, Lance could have gone the same way over the princess. Her lack of scent just made her all the more interesting - he had to work for the relationship more, and Lance was relishing the challenge. And he didn’t even have to the right to - he just knew what it was like to have a non-familial omega around.

Huffing for breath, he tried not to whine or snarl as he followed Keith around a corner, only to find him rushing towards the lifts.

“No! Keith!” He yelled as the other boy rushed into the space, and began to close the doors. “Keith, come back-”

The doors closed, and had he not skidded to a stop, Lance might have body slammed right into them. Growling in frustration he looked at the control panel on the lift, the deck highlighted on the display, trying to get an idea of where he would have to follow Keith to.

_ Unit 543B-A. _

Where was that again? The training deck? No, that was the engineering decks. The engine rooms? No, wait, wasn’t that the lion hangar? Why was he heading to the lion hangar? It wasn’t far from the engine bays - maybe Keith had caught Hunk’s scent?

Hunk was in the engine rooms. 

Hunk. 

Another alpha, who was probably on the verge of his own rut with Pidge’s heat scent still hovering around in the air. Who had discovered Keith’s nest first, had encroached on his territory.

This time, Lance slammed his own forehead into the metal of the doors. He knew Hunk probably wouldn’t challenge Keith. For one thing, Hunk’s scent hadn’t finished maturing, so he doubted Keith would take it seriously even if he did, but Lance was still concerned.

If Keith thought Hunk was causing Pidge any other sort of upset (which made no sense because Pidge was in the Med bay, but rut brain wasn’t exactly known for its logic, and Keith’s was dubious at the best of times) they could still fight. Keith’s scent  _ was _ mature and he would react to foreign scents with the same reasoning as an adult this far into his rut.

He was already halfway to savage! Lance shuddered to think what he’d be like if his rut was aggravated to that stage. For a moment, he tried getting into the comm network again, hoping that Coran had maybe fixed whatever the problem was.

No such luck.

Finally after fifteen anxious minutes, the lift returned, and Lance, against his better judgement, stepped inside.

* * *

As the doors to the lift closed behind him, Keith’s nerves momentarily settled, but he didn’t pause to relax. He was sure that his nest was still safe - he’d locked the door during his last visit to it - but now there was an unwanted omega chasing him.

Were they trying to challenge Pidge? He didn’t want anyone to challenge Pidge. He wanted to be with her during rut, make sure her heat progressed smoothly and without discomfort. He didn’t want to go into rut with a different omega. His nest was for Pidge and no-one else.

He had to find her. He’d caught her scent, thicker and heavier in the air towards the lower decks of the castle already. Glancing at the communication device projected from a thin bracket on his wrist, and with a few swipes and flicks, he had a tracking system on screen.

He couldn’t check for any of the other Alphas or Betas or Omegas aboard, but Pidge’s information was easily accessible, and using the castle’s built-in tech, he was able to trace her location exactly.

Just like his nose had told him, she was in one of the lower, central areas of the engineering decks - the lion hangar itself. He could only hope that in the time the lift took to return, he could make it to her before Lance tried to follow him andscent him.

Pidge would scent him. Even if she didn’t accept his nest, he was sure she would still agree to scent him, and purge the unwanted scent from his glands that lingered. He could smell it, and he desperately wanted wanted it to be gone.

The lift reached its destination, the doors sliding apart to release a stronger blast of the omega girl’s perfume. It was much thicker, clearly indicating her receptive state, but that wasn’t the one that first jumped out at him.

It was the second scent. Young, without the pull and lure and protective under layers that came with mature scents, but still clearly alpha. Growling anxiously, Keith bolted from the lift, racing as fast as he could through the Red Paladin’s entrance, skidding out into the hangar beneath Red’s belly.

Pidge’s scent was emanating from the small area across from him beneath Green, just beside her metallic paw. She was roosting on a pile of blankets Keith knew had been there while she worked on her tech and when she was translating Altean operating systems to English. Not far away, half hidden behind Yellow’s paw, was the alpha scent he’d picked up.

Judging by the distance from Pidge’s roosting spot, he was trying to avoid angering her by stepping too close, but Keith did notice some used water packets, and growled. There was also a lower smell of alpha pheromones in the air, now that he was closer, indicating that Hunk on some level found attraction in Pidge’s heat scent.

Hunk might not be actively trying to show his appeal as an alpha to Pidge, or try to steal Keith’s nest and present it as his own, but he was close enough to a mature scent that it made him wary of the Yellow Paladin.

His own scent drifting around attracted Pidge’s attention and she chirped, sitting up and sniffing the air until she finally set her eyes on him as he moved towards Hunk with a growl in his throat.

For a moment, he let off warning rumbles to the other alpha, until Hunk whined in acquiescence, tilting his head to bare his glands, showing his submission, making himself appear less of a threat.

Keith rumbled once more in warning before turning to Pidge, waiting at the edge of her small nest until she gave him a trill, permission to come closer and enter her private space. Her scent was thicker in the air now, clearly that of an omega in preheat, about to be hit by the full flux. Her eyes were a little dilated and her skin was warm to the touch as she nuzzled into his arms.

Keith whined as her nose reached his neck, and a hiss of dissatisfaction escaped her throat. Immediately, she wormed into his lap and began to press kisses to his lips and cheeks, slowly leading to his glands, reapplying her own scent on them.

Keith finally relaxed as his girlfriend’s familiar scent came back stronger in his nose, safe, warm, comforting, and reassuring. He also felt much less worried about Hunk (who he had heard rushing for the door) with the accepting scent of the female omega surrounding him.

Aside from its calming qualities, her scent also served another function - expressing to all that she considered him a worthy alpha. And it made Keith want to preen. Hunk hadn’t carried pidge’s scent. Nobody else held that right. Just him.

Pulling back for a moment from her attention, he rumbled appreciatively at her, going beneath his jacket and holding out one of the blankets from the nest. A green one he knew had been stolen from her Lion’s cargo bay.

“It’s from my nest,” he said, as if the action of handing her supplies for a nest could indicate anything else, or be misconstrued somehow. “It’s yours if you want it,” he added, tone hopeful, pressing their foreheads together. “Do you want to inspect it?”

Pidge purred and leaned in close, content, silently taking the blanket from his hands and pulling it close, letting her scent cover it directly. It was as clear an indicator as any that she was happy to look at the nest and assess it for her needs. 

“I don’t need to, just this is perfect,” she declared.

Pidge leaned back against his shoulder with the blanket, still sniffing it experimentally, working out which scents were on it. Keith had taken care to include only his own and hers, as well as a couple of shirts Matt had left behind when he visited the castleship.

“…Lance,” she snarled quietly once the light scenting had been completed.

“He followed me,” Keith murmured, pressing in close, arching his neck for her.

Maybe he should have asked Pidge if he could court her sooner; they wouldn't be sneaking around the castle, and Lance wouldn't have scented him. They could have prepared together a little more, and been much more relaxed about it all.

Pidge sniffed in distaste a little, before curling her body closer, leaning up again to nip at his exposed neck and glands, soothing the bites with her tongue. Keith’s breath caught in his throat as she scented him, his hand going to the small of her waist, seeking the warm skin beneath her tank.

Sensing the direction of the attention, Pidge divested herself of her tank with little concern, leaning back and clasping her hands round the back of his neck and shoulders so as to support herself. Her legs were spread over his hips, and the slow heave of her breast was as much an enticement as her scent.

It was thicker without the clothing barrier, and reached his nose easier. Comforting and familiar, and so thick, warm, and absolutely welcoming. His omega was happy and content, and she was pleased with him. 

His hands wandered, pulling her snug against his chest as her lips moved from his glands, and Pidge pulled him into a deep, gentle, but impatient kiss. Her scent was thicker and thicker with every moment, and his knot was beginning to itch, to swell already. 

Pidge had divested herself of her pyjama pants somewhere in the nest - probably from discomfort as her skin became too heated and sensitive even for the smooth and silky Altean fabric - and that worked much in their favour as they began to lose themselves to each other. It meant he only had to worry about her underwear.

Sinking two fingers into her core, Pidge melted against him, her gorgeous moans spilling into his ears as they slowly worked, filling the room with combined scents of an aroused, bonding pair. Shifting her, he left his own kisses on her neck, relaying his scent to hers. Firmly, but not to break skin, he sucked and covered one of her nipples in his scent too.

Focusing on the bud of nerves within the folds of her wet cunt, Keith held her steady as the langud and insatiate aspects of her state made her writhe into the attention. It all culminated in a word on her lips that went straight to his knot.

“Alpha…” Pidge moaned, her voice feral and warm as her breath on his cheek as she sprawled herself over him, his continuous thrusts slow and steady to the cries between her words. “...my alpha… taste...please…”

If the amorous exchange wasn’t enough of a clear reception from the beautiful omega girl, then the direct words she spoke, calling Keith hers,  _ her alpha _ , more than cleared any lingering doubt.

Katie had accepted him as her alpha, and not just for this heat, but as a court. She wanted to bond with him. 

Had it not been for the ‘cling’ of the lift, they might have done so right there, in front of the lions. Later Keith would be grateful they didn't, but at that moment, he could only whine in  confusion at the snarl that began to rumble in his omega’s throat.

Pidge had tensed up, leaning up over him, her nose twitching at a scent that did not belong. When her eyes landed on a figure behind him, at the door to the hall, a vicious and feral snarl ripped from between her teeth, cutting through their arousal instantly.

As Lance let out an expletive somewhere behind him (‘ _ Oh, fudge nuggets, _ ’), Keith couldn’t help but think the whole scene - Pidge, virtually naked in his lap, feral with heat and anger over the scent of an omega who’d tried to claim him - was the single most arousing, yet terrifying experience his knot ever had the bliss of being included in.

* * *

 

Please thank KDXArt for being an enabler and encouraging me to finish this at 3am. <strike>no really, do, she's the best kind of enabler</strike>

You're welcome for the smut, the filth, the p0rn >:)


	4. Still Learning to Behave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I highly reccommend listening to 'Lets Kill The Night' by Panic! At The Disco, as it was a Pidge anthem for this chapter.

“So, that’s the basics,” Shiro scratched his head. “Any more questions?”

Where on earth was she supposed to start? Allura had a great deal of questions. For the most part, she had followed Shiro’s explanation of human dynamics. She had already known them to be a very sensory based species just by watching, so their habits and practices weren’t entirely unsurprising.

It didn't answer the majority of her questions though. Growing up without such a group-based social hierarchy made a lot of human needs and behaviours strange to her. She sometimes had found herself drawn into the group nest the Paladins had made in the lounge room, in the sunken ring below the chairs, feeling a little bewildered by the whole thing.

She was diplomatic enough and knew the Paladins enough to know it was a sign of affection and in some ways, curling up in a pile of bodies and soft blankets was hardly uncomfortable.

Quite the opposite.

But the explanation offered so many more questions not just about human society and biology, but the Paladins themselves. She needed to stick to the basics though. There would be time for that whenever this emergency (however dire it was) was settled.

“Let me see if I understand everything…” she started, concentrating as they wandered the hallways, looking and searching for signs of anyone at this point. An update was badly needed. Until then, she and Shiro were likely walking in aimless circles.

“Pidge and Lance both have a secondary sex which determines their reproductive capabilities and are known as Omegas, which mean they are both capable of carrying children. Their difference lies in their primary sex, which means Lance is also capable of impregnating a receptive partner, whilst Pidge can only carry a child.” she started, looking to the human for confirmation.

Shiro nodded, and with his assurance, Allura moved on to the others. “Hunk and Keith are both Male alphas, meaning they are capable of only impregnating a partner.

“Exactly,” Shiro said encouragingly. “A female alpha is the equivalent of a male omega to alphas - they would be able to impregnate a receptive partner, but are also capable of carrying children themselves. You tend not to see too many alphas around, so I’m kind of surprised we have two in one pack.”

Allura nodded in understanding, then continued. “A third secondary gender also exists, known as Betas, and this gender acts as a buffer between the two. You are one of these betas?”

“Somewhat,” Shiro nodded. “Betas are a bit more like an intersex of all genders and dynamics,” he explained. “We’re born with the same physical make up as male omegas and female alphas in that we possess both sets of reproductive organs, but our biological functions tend not to settle until we mate, and align to our partners. After mating, depending on the orientations of our mates, we lose one type of reproductive functionality, and following that, we have the same symptoms during our reproductive cycles as alphas or omegas, whichever applies. Until we mate and bond, we sort of present as both and experience alpha ruts and omega heats in alteration, though not as frequently.”

“Which are your reproductive cycles,” Allura nodded. “And bonding is a spiritual connection? Like Altean’s choosing a life companion?” She asked.

“Well, yes,” Shiro nodded. “But it’s more than that, though it depends on the type of bond. A full mating bonding combines scents between two people so that their bodies will only be able to fertilise or be fertilised by their partner until one dies. It’s a very big commitment. And for betas, it also determines our sexual function permanently, based on our first bonded partner. Some people will never be able to produce children with another partner if the previous bond was old enough, at least the older bonds between monogamous couples.”

“So polyamorous families also exist in human societies?” Finally, something she could relate to!

“Yes. If a polyamorous partners bond with each other early enough, then they would be able to breed together. There is a threshold before it becomes impossible, but it’s not really something we should need to worry about too much. I hope.”

“And in general, this is why we are concerned about Pidge and Keith?” Allura asked. “Because they will be spending their cycles together and intend to bond?”

“That, and while both of them are of legal age back home now, if Pidge’s date calculations are right, we don’t know if they’ve spoken to each other about it properly yet. If they have, then the decision is theirs to make,” Shiro said. “But in general, to avoid confusions, humans usually intervene when there’s a measure of doubt involved especially when heats and ruts come into play. Our instincts are strong and sometimes it’s easy for any gender or dynamic to exploit another.”

Allura nodded. She assumed it was like being drunk, unable to make a decision with absolute certainty, and she applauded the Paladins. “The failure to recycle your scents has triggered this, and that’s the cause of your concern then?” She asked.

Shiro nodded. “I doubt it was solely responsible, but it probably sped things along a decent amount.”

Allura thought about that. It was logical, and she felt a much a poor host for not asking the Paladins of their genetic requirements sooner. Since they required similar-enough breathable gases to Alteans, it had never occurred to her to ask. This issue was her fault and she did not want to cause her Paladins any more distress.

Hence her keen interest in the topic. She had failed to understand how complex humans could be as a species; their entire social structure and culture was dominated by their reproductive urges, cycles, and personal sexes. She had seen other cultures like theirs, and her failure to consider all the needs they might require whilst living aboard her castle was her failing.

Allura hated failure.

* * *

 

As soon as Pidge had sprawled herself all over Keith and started scenting him, Hunk had made a dash for the hallway.

As if the contented rumbles and purrs of the pair as they reacquainted themselves with each other and Keith, almost shyly, giving Pidge an element of the nest he’d built her wasn't enough of a sign that they were so deep onto the last stages of courting, then the warning growl had been more than enough explanation that he was intruding.

The obvious onset of what was, undeniably, a courting pair establishing a heat partnership only added to his haste. He did not want to be part of this, see it, or be involved with it in any way, shape, or form. No way. No matter how good Keith and Pidge’s combined scents actually were in person. Nope. He was not that guy.

He knew he should try and break them up, but contrary to Shiro’s opinion, he didn't feel like there was any doubt here. Keith wasn’t that guy, and Pidge wasn't that sort of girl. If they'd been back home, their courtship would probably have been a lot more traditional and clear, and none of this confusion would be apparent.

Being in space took them away from established conventions, and what was and was not acceptable was different. It was probably that which had made them less vocal and obvious about their quiet, but still almost tangible appreciation of each other.

Hunk couldn’t quite remember when he started noticing it, but even if the usual courting patterns weren't there, it was clear what was going on. It became much clearer when Pidge started spending the nights in Keith's room. Normally, that would be unheard of on Earth, for both their sakes.

And yet, for a few months now, it had been normal to see them sharing a room, or dozing together in the common area, or hovering close to the other at Coalition gatherings. Pidge didn't _quite_ smell of Keith, or wear the protective layer of scent that would come from any sort of physical bond mark, but really, what other sort of indication did they need?

If Pidge and Keith hadn't talked about spending a heat or rut together, he would be mildly surprised, but to him, he felt that this had been brewing for a while. Pidge couldn't have just ‘ _gone into heat_ ’ because their scents had been mixing more than they were used to.

Human scent technology removed a lot the danger of heats and ruts in public, but in private? It couldn't get rid of it completely. That wouldn't just be unhealthy, it would be a disruption to the entirety of their social perception. Part of it had to remain because their social interactions depended on it. Ergo, this wasn't something which had happened overnight.

No, Keith and Pidge had been making their own steps towards this for some time, without the need for embellishment or drama. He had never finished the Garrison curriculum on Dynamics, but he had eyes, and Hunk knew his friends.

They were happy, and they deserved privacy more than an invasive set of questions designed to disrupt their hormones–and potentially upset and stall their entire cycle–and assess them.

He almost made it out of the room. The gentle growls and purrs behind him assured him that Keith and Pidge were too invested in each other to care about anything else.

Hunk was more than content to run far, far away and find Shiro or Allura, and leave them in peace, but several things began to happen at once.

Ahead of him, the doors started closing of their own accord. Then the contented sounds were gone, quickly replaced with harsh snarls and the yowl of angry omega that made Hunk freeze in his attempt to flee.

Turning around, he felt the blood in his face wash away, draining it to a pallor of horror as he watched Lance stumble through the doorway from the lift. Behind Hunk the hangar doors thudded closed, and the ambience dimmed to very low light.

Pidge’s scent was sour, and he couldn’t help an anxious whine as her snarls and growls grew, eyes fixed on Lance from where she had entangled herself with Keith, unyielding, very displeased, and (to his poor knot’s dismay) very, _very naked_.

Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. Well, besides the obvious fact that Pidge–because apparently being in heat didn’t hinder her ability to render alien technology useless with a few taps of a keyboard–had initiated a lockdown on the hangar, and there was another omega right in front of her roost spot.

“Lance! What are you doing here?!” he hissed out.

Lance was frozen where he had stumbled into the hangar, not daring to move, a similar look of horror on his own face, with layers of fear as Pidge continued to snarl and growl, more ferocious than anything Hunk had ever heard since leaving home (including the robeasts, spacewitch, and a despotic alien overlord).

And the scent–oh stars, the scent–was horrible. It was anger and anxiety all rolled into something putrid, despite Keith’s obvious attempts to placate his intended bond-mate, nuzzling her neck and cheeks, putting his scent on display for her, showing his preference to her instead of the second omega that had intruded on their very, very private moment.

“I was just trying to herd Keith back to his room, I swear!” Lance whined, his eyes going wide as he realised what exactly he had stumbled into. “Why is Pidge here? She’s supposed to be with Coran!”

Pidge had got to her feet, in all her tiny might, and was glowering at Lance as she stepped in front of Keith. Her scent oozed from every inch of her skin, and Hunk whined as his dick started to have another aneurysm, and his lizard brain panicked at the scent of angry omega that was mixing in with the warm arousal that already lingered through the hangar.

Oh no. This was not good, especially when Keith’s distressed scent was growing in the air too. That meant he saw Lance as an unwelcome threat, and it made it evident that he had not only sought Pidge out to bond for her heat, but for his own assurance. For safety.

From Lance, who was here. In the same room as Pidge. She was completely feral now, and was eyeing him like he’d murdered the children she probably wanted to get on making with Keith. Or, more likely, threatened their bonding process with his scent.

Which was another good question; why the hell could he smell Lance mixed into the scents before he even showed up? Hunk really wanted someone to answer that question.

“Why were you chasing Keith?!” Hunk choked once he realised what Lance had said. “Are you crazy? You chased an Alpha who building a nest for another omega? Of course he ran away from you - you could have been trying to steal his nest!”

“I wasn't trying to find him!” Lance insisted a whine of fear in his voice as he bared his neck to Pidge, sinking to the ground and making himself as small as possible as her scent flooded the room. “He just showed up and panicked and, by the way, I thought he wasn't supposed to find Pidge? Why isn't she in the med bay?!”

“She snuck into the vents and hacked the castle comms! Also, I think she initiated the lockdown for this hangar.”

“What?! How the _fu_ –”

Pidge snarled, a high-pitched noise as she stalked towards him. Lance squeaked and backed away a bit farther, shill bearing his neck. “I’m sorry, I didn't know you were busy here!” he insisted a little wildly, broadcasting a low, meek scent to Pidge as she encroached. “I swear, it was an accident!”

What was an accident? Hunk had a very bad feeling in his belly from those words. Why, exactly had Keith been running away from Lance?

“Lance, what did you do?” Hunk asked suspiciously.

“It was an accident! My hand slipped!” Lance insisted, though to him or Pidge, Hunk wasn’t sure. “I swear I don’t want him! Keep him Pidge! Not my type of alpha!”

Hunk whined again, in dismay. He couldn’t believe this. He was mishearing, clearly! Lance hadn't scented Keith. There was no way. Lance was not stupid, and he certainly wasn't _that_ stupid.

Friends or not, there was no way any omega would tolerate the scent of another omega on their alpha, especially a bonded pair (which Hunk was comfortable assuming Keith and Pidge were at this point).

Lance arched his neck further, as Pidge crouched, preparing herself to attack, and that was his mistake. It was too strong, and it wafted past Pidge, towards Keith, who let out a snarl of objection, and Pidge yowled in anger with enough pitch to sting Hunk’s ears.

With it, the myriad of scent and posturing finally made sense, and Hunk, really, _really_ wasn’t prepared to handle this by himself. About the only positive to come from this mess was that at least his knot was going down.

Lance had scented Keith–how in the heavens he’d managed it, Hunk didn’t know, the how really was irrelevant–and burst in just when he had been giving Pidge a piece of his nest.

Lance hadn’t just given Keith a scent he hadn’t wanted, he’d intruded on a sensitive, key part of courtship. He had trespassed on Pidge’s alpha, intruded on their personal relationship.

Lance’s scent when he bared his neck had been an intended sign of submission to Pidge, but he hadn't thought about how strong it was, or which way it was directed. Behind Pidge, towards the very alpha he’d accidentally scented.

To the feral girl that loomed before his friend, then that could only mean one thing; Lance had all but screamed that he was fighting her for Keith’s nest, and Pidge was gearing up to defend her claim on it.

Behind them, the Lions’ eyes lit up, and Hunk could feel Yellow’s presence– _worry–fighting–Voltron–Paladin–stop_ –flooding through his subconscious as the Red and Green lions seemed to glare at each other. On its raised platform, Black too, had opened their eyes, and sat silent, observing.

“P-Pidge, wait–”

The Lions roared, and Pidge snarled, leaping towards Lance in utter fury.

“Oh quiznack…” Hunk whispered.

If the Lions and Pidge didn’t kill them, then he was absolutely one hundred percent certain that Shiro was going to.

* * *

 

“...I think I’m follow the biology, but I still don’t quite understand where these terms come into play. I understand the terms intersex, male, female, they are translatable to me, but this second dynamic is not one I’m familiar with, besides a few animals.”

She didn’t really want to equate the Paladins to animals, but she needed some form of reference, and so far, only the bond shared by a pack of Yelmors was close enough, in her experience, to what Shiro was trying to describe.

“I suppose it is hard to explain. In basic knowledge, the term refers to a person’s scent, but it also lends itself to their reactions to other scents and behaviours from pack mates, as well as its effects on others.” Shiro frowned in thought again, trying to come up with an example.

“Take our pack huddles for instance. Had I not already known them, I could have worked out everyone's secondary sex based on how they placed themselves, even without my nose.”

“How?”

“Pidge and Lance tend to prefer the central area because their scent draws people in. It’s a natural place for them to feel safe, because it’s the way their scents work. Keith and Hunk also don’t approach it too closely, or their rooms without invitation. There’s a bit of personality involved in all that, but to do so would be considered impolite.”

Allura nodded again. “I think I understand that for now, though perhaps I should speak with the other Paladins individually. Their own thoughts might help me understand in a broader perspective,” she mused. “Right now, we are worried about Pidge’s heat and Keith being in rut. What happens if someone does not have a partner during a heat, or rut? Are there certain reactions I should be aware of in case this happens again?” She asked.

“There are…. A lot of things going on right now,” Shiro admitted, his face falling into an exhausted expression. “But the answers to both those questions varies… It depends on how deep into their breeding cycle they are.”

What followed was a rich, detailed explanation which Allura did her very best to commit to memory.

An omega’s heat could last anything from one quintant to over a movement in length, depending on individual hormones and biology, but commonly male heats tended to be shorter, as it was harder for their bodies to produce the hormone needed to sustain them (which Shiro called oestrogen).

Omegas could share their heats or go through them alone. If they chose to share it with someone, the nature of it depended on the omega and their requirements during the period, as well as relationship with and the gender and dynamic of their chosen partner. They could also easily expel someone from their nest if need be with little to no harm.

“Our problem, is that given that Pidge and Keith have been courting, or as close to it as they can unofficially get to it here in space - like going out, or dating - the chance is high that it will become a sexual heat. Keith going into rut is another sign of this.” Shiro continued as Allura tapped frustratedly at her wrist computer.

She was trying to send several different types of comm links through to Coran and the med bay, the bridge, anything, but nothing was working!

“It means his own body has synchronised to Pidge’s scent and is rushing to catch up so that they’ll be able to breed successfully, if she allows him into her nest,” Shiro added. “Keith isn’t a close relative, and he’s young and healthy. He’s already proven himself interested by courting and building Pidge a nest. I suspect she would all but drag him in.”

“If I’m to assume that humans share some common behaviours with the animals I mentioned before, then I guess that separating them once that occurs would not be wise,” she guessed giving up on her computer for a while, setting a few programs to try work in the background. If anything got through, she would get a ping.

“Keith would attack us the very second we approached Pidge’s nest without her permission. Likewise, if we tried to take Keith out of Pidge’s nest, she’d react with hostility. Keith would mostly respond based on her reaction to us, and if that put him in danger, Pidge would likely then get involved.”

* * *

 

Lance was not so insecure in his identity as a Male omega that he would deny screaming like his baby niece Nadia sighting a spider, because to do that would be to deny how brilliant of a scream it was when he was attacked by a tiny naked girl.

Pidge lunged with a vicious snarl on her lips, and he quickly rolled out of the way and rushed off towards the Red lion, hoping desperately for sanctuary. It was a perfect, foolproof plan. He’d be safe from Pidge, and she and Keith would be less bothered by his scent! It was a winner.

Only, to get to Red, he had to go past Greenie’s feet, where Keith was pacing back and forth, growling unpleasantly. Okay, so first he had to _get_ to the Red lion before Pidge killed him, but - at least it was a plan!

Quickly back-pedalling so he could try to run around behind the back of the other lions, he didn't have seconds before he heard a snarl, and had to swerve again as Pidge attempted to wrestle him to the floor.

Above them the Red and Green lions roared, and Lance could feel Red’s grumbling irritation in the back of his head.

“What the hell is wrong with the Lions?!” he yelped, dodging again as Pidge swiped a fist at his face, only to fall as her leg swept his own out from beneath him (with yet another dignified shriek).

“It’s a mystical psychic connection! How am I supposed to know?” Hunk called out from his hiding place. “But if we don’t do something who knows what’ll happen!”

Lance rolled away from Pidge before she could pin him, but he was disorientated.

“Oh sure, I’ll just come up with something while Pidge is trying to kill me!” he yelled back, quickly taking in his surroundings. He was hovering by the Blue lion’s feet, opposite from Red and still too close to Green for his comfort.

“You scented her Alpha!”

Lance did his best to ignore Hunk for a moment, his eyes and nose working to locate the feral omega currently hunting him. After a moment of scanning the room, sniffing for the pointed, unmistakable scent of an angry omega, he finally spotted her.

Pidge was crouched on her Lion’s paw beside Keith, still looking like she wanted to tear him to shreds, and she was holding-

Her bayard whizzed through the air, crackling and buzzing with electric as the hook wedged itself into the wall behind him. The blades crackled in the metal of the wall, and Lance eyed it in horror for a moment, before whimpering, and quickly squirrelling away beneath the line before she could retract the weapon and fire it again.

“I told you, it was an accident!” he yelled in dismay to Hunk as he fled for the other side of the Blue Lion, where hopefully he could stay out of reach for a while. The electrical charge on that thing was no joke, and he had absolutely no desire to reacquaint himself with it. Once was plenty, thank you very much.

He needed a better plan, and fast. This was not working at all. Rushing to one of the equipment locker behind the lion, he grabbed hold of a shield disc, and not a moment too soon before the fizz in the air reached his ears.

Looking around, he saw nothing. He could smell her, but the scent of Pidge’s heat and general displeasure was so thick now that he couldn’t really use it to pinpoint her location, and after several games of hide and seek, he knew that unless she wanted to be found, chances were she’d stay hidden.

He really, really wanted his bayard.

Seriously though, why couldn't they have just let Pidge and Keith fuck, like they had clearly wanted to for weeks? That would have saved him ninety-nine-point-nine percent of all his current problems.

Somewhere he could hear Keith snarling and Hunk whining in appeasement, so he couldn't count on his alpha buddy for too much help. He had another problem to deal with; if something happened to set Keith off, they were going to die. It was a simple fact. The only person who could best Keith was Shiro, or the gladiator, and that was when he wasn't in rut.

If Keith thought Pidge was in danger, this would become even more of a shit storm. Best to let Hunk keep their temperamental team leader distracted until Lance could persuade their tiny naked teammate that he was not trying to fight her for Keith’s knot... Ew. That was a bad mental image.

The distraction caused by thinking about Keith’s knot–god, he was going to need brain bleach after all this; first Pidge attacking him in her birthday suit, now emo boy’s _tackle?_ –was, unfortunately, exactly what Pidge had been waiting for.

He didn’t see her swing down from the top of the Black lion, using her bayard like a tarzan-vine hooked around the Blue lion’s ear to swoop down and ram her feet into his back, sending him skidding out from behind Blue into the centre of the hangar, with several bruises from the uncomfortable rolls and bounces along the way.

Lance groaned into the floor; Shiro and Allura (and Keith) were never going to let him live this down in team training. Never.

He got back to his feet in time for Pidge to jump into his vision again, just before her fist connected with his nose, and another low aimed kick sent him flying again.

“Will you please defend yourself?!” Hunk demanded as he went flying past, landing against the Yellow lion’s foot with an ‘ _oof_ ’ “We can’t afford to be a Paladin down because you interrupted Pidge when she was trying to get laid, and didn’t fight back!”

Lance coughed, watching the green paladin as she stalked down the centre of the hangar. How the hell could she be so terrifying to him when she was butt naked? Wasn’t imagining people naked supposed to be a not-nervous thing? He was going to have an anxiety attack if he ever tried that again at this rate!

“I don’t want to hurt her!” he said. “Heat lizard brain is a bitch okay? I know what it’s like. You saw my last heat! I nearly broke Nadia’s arm in the training gym because I thought she was making a pass at James!”

Hunk shuddered, presumably at the memory; Lance couldn’t blame him - he shuddered at it too. It hadn’t been quite Keith’s crazy-feral-alpha-sedation levels of Garrison legend, but it certainly wouldn’t be a forgotten incident either.

“I know that, but Lance, buddy, she clearly wants to hurt you,” his friend insisted, with that patient tone that was definitely not patient. Like his Mum’s. “So unless you want black eyes to match that nose, you need to do something! I’m running out of ways to keep Keith distracted!”

“What _have_ you been doing?” Lance asked curiously.

“I threw some water and sustenance packs at him. I was hoping he’d start to try and build another nest, Pidge has enough junk lying around,” Hunk said.

The defeated tone in his voice told him that plan was going about as well as Lance’s current ‘ _try and run away_ ’ plan.

He had considered fleeing to the other end of the ship, but Pidge would hunt him down until she got a submission she was happy with, and unfortunately, she was interpreting his behaviour as transgression enough for a full-on brawl. Oh, and the hangar was in lockdown.

The sound of an encroaching growl warned him that he couldn’t sit and chat for any longer, and looking around, he found Pidge approaching from the Blue lion. Whining at whatever ominous plans were being directed on his person, Lance did his best to follow Hunk’s advice, and fled.

“Lance, no! Not that way!”

It was too late, Lance was already running… towards the _Green Lion_ . Towards the _nest_. Where Keith was crouched with a snarly face and horrible sound brewing in his throat. Oh god, oh god, oh god, save him, he couldn’t stop running!

Lance rapidly tried to backpedal, but despite rushing back towards the Yellow Lion he knew the damage had been done; there was an unholy screech before he was toppled to the ground by a tiny naked midget demonstrating her excellent capabilities for sneak attacks.

Pidge had her feet pinned on his shoulders, resting her weight into the joints and pinning him to the ground. She snarled in his ear, and it was the most terrifying thing he’d seen since they ended up in space.

He didn't know if it was just the pressure on his shoulders or the instinctual fear, but it was utterly disorientating until he heard Hunk swearing, before the girl crushing him to the floor–seriously, what the hell was Allura teaching her in their ‘ _girls-only_ ’ sparring practice? – was plucked off his body in a mass of snarling limbs by the sturdy-set alpha.

For a moment, Lance’s lizard brain had a moment to appreciate just what a good alpha Hunk was–no, really, he’d be dumb not to notice his best friend was a total catch, and all the arousal in the air wasn’t exactly escaping his nose–before he realised what exactly was happening.

Hunk was standing, dumbfounded at himself, yards away from the Greenie where Keith had stilled ominously, with their struggling tiny teammate screeching in protest in his arms–still naked, Lance might add–both for freedom from the unwanted alpha’s hold, and for the opportunity to rip Lance’s face off.

Keith, who up till now had been sedate enough, confident that Pidge was safe in her quest to dominate, prove that she had a rightful claim to the nest over Lance, was no longer disinterested. His thick, musky, agitated rut scent was growing heavier and a matching growl echoed from the Black lion-which was totally not ominous at all–as he zeroed in on Hunk.

The whimper that squeaked out from his friend was entirely appropriate.

“Oh no…” Hunk groaned as Keith’s eyes–yellow, glowing eyes, oh holy hell, not the Galra eyes–settled on the pair of them.

For a moment, Lance though Hunk was just talking about the eerie gaze and the less than reasonable mood that undoubtedly accompanied them. Then he sniffed the air once, and wrinkled his nose in horror.

“Are you actually popping a knot right now? _Hunk!_ ”

Dear god, he did not need to be this intimately acquainted with his friend, really. Lance was comfortable sharing a family level of scent with his teammates, but being so intimately introduced to their combined states of arousal was…

Look. Lance was a grown omega with a healthy sex drive, and he appreciated a nice scented man or lady, but this was the wrong kind of torture! And it was definitely not going unnoticed by Keith, who had progressed from snarls to full on strangled snarls of challenge and warning.

“I’m from a Poly-pack!” Hunk whined, his growing realisation and panic evident. “I find combined scents attractive, okay?”

“Are you going to tell Keith that?” Lance asked, hoarsely, as if whispering when they weren’t directly in front of the rutting alpha giving them the evil eye for–or so it appeared–threatening his bondmate and–or so it appeared–intruding upon their nest and trying to steal it.

A new sound emerged from Pidge (who they had managed to forget about despite her squirming and tiny rage), returning their attention the very dire matter at hand. It was something mournful and desperate, like a cry for help, one which would have made fur stand on end, if they’d had any.

Keith had been staring at them for some time, his body tense, and the moment Pidge let out her cry, that desperate sound that only an omega who felt threatened could make, whatever remnant of restraint he’d had left was gone, and he darted from the nest towards them, filling the air with his infuriated growls.

* * *

 

Shiro’s tone was so matter of fact and blunt that for a tick, Allura thought he was joking.

Then, when he didn’t expand on that statement, her face paled as she realised he was not being humorous at all.

“If they’re at that stage, where they’re possessive of each other, and looking to stay away from the pack, then it’s safer not to get involved without training, but most humans know the basics, and all of our emergency and special forces, and some social industries have compulsory standard courses,” he sighed, the stress of the situation clear in his tone. “Pidge especially is a concern on that front.”

“Why?” Allura blinked. “I thought we were more worried about Keith?”

“Oh, I am,” Shiro assured her a little gloomily. “Keith’s ruts are very strong. He was sedated when he was a cadet, something I suspect now is due to his Galra heritage, but his volatility will probably only be directed at Hunk. Pidge is an Omega. Now that she’s found an alpha, she’ll be determined to keep him around. Omegas outnumber alphas historically, so they tend to be on edge around other omegas, especially if they have an alpha in mind to share their heat with them.”

Allura thought back to their discovery of Keith’s nest, when Pidge had growled at Lance and almost launched herself at him for commenting on a scent, one coming from Keith’s room that had escaped her Altean nose.

“On top of that, she’ll be aiming to put off unwanted Alpha attention. Even if he’s just friendly, being around Hunk will make her edgy.”

“And Alphas? Do they not try to contend with each other over potential partners otherwise?” Allura asked.

“Most alphas tend to respect the boundaries set out by a pair who’ve already matched scents, or formed any kind of physical bond. A second alpha would never cross that boundary unless invited by the first alpha,” Shiro said. “They tend to be more dangerous, and the scent of fighting alphas is extremely intense, so most tend to avoid unnecessary fights. It distresses Omegas, and that goes against their instincts to protect them. Their fights tend to be subtle unless the situation is extremely bad. If Keith and Pidge hadn’t already shared scents, it wouldn’t be unusual if Hunk offered Pidge a court of his own, as that stage is much less formal; due to the population disparity, it’s not unusual for multiple courts to take place at the same time, but that’s part of why Hunk isn’t as affected by Pidge’s scent as Keith is. They aren’t as close. Keith can pick up on the deeper hormones present in Pidge’s heat scent because they’ve gone beyond the normal stages courting already. Sort of. They haven't really courted per se, and don't have the usual marks which indicate that, but their scents reflect that, and that's more important than a mark at first.”

Allura considered all this. “What exactly do you mean by attacking? Is it simply a physical fight?”

“Depends. It’s not like we lose all sense of self during our season. We still retain knowledge and skills we’d have outside of it. We aren't mindless, but our drive changes, and that's what makes them dangerous. All garrison cadets are trained in physical combat and weaponry. We also have to consider their bayards. If pushed, or threatened enough, they could really, really hurt each other.”

Shiro’s voice was sombre and the tone of it made Allura’s skin feel cold. She had assumed that the danger was an unconscious one, something the Paladins wouldn't have much awareness of. Now she thought, it might be kinder if Shiro's words were not true.

She had known that humans possessed remarkable drive in everything they did - indeed they all seemed to have no patience, or inclination for calm in their own different ways - and it had made them excellent Paladins. Now that she understood where some of their base functions came from, she realised how frighteningly true that idea was.

“But… knowing all of this, how are we to intervene?” Allura asked.

“Just because I can't smell anything doesn't mean I can’t still use my own scent. It still exists, even if I can't smell it, and luckily for us, you and Coran are completely neutral entities. It means we should be able to get close enough to confirm our suspicions, and then leave them in peace.”

“And if we have to separate them?” Allura asked.

“Then it’s up to me,” Shiro replied heavily. “But I’m hoping I won't have to. Hunk and Lance have had plenty of preparation for this kind of incident at the Garrison. I’m sure they’ll be able to approach the situation with the right kind of cauti–”

Shiro and Allura were both shaken as the sound of the Lions roaring echoed and rocked the castleship; even though he was no longer the black lion’s pilot, Shiro still felt it on occasion, and right now the remnants of that bond were laced with _anger_ and _concern_ and _help them_. The feeling threw them both off their feet as the growls echoed through the halls.

“Blue?” Allura mumbled beside him. Then she gasped. “The hangar!

Once the roars of the lions started to fade, neither Shiro nor Allura spoke another word. They just rushed through the corridors, down numerous flights of step for what felt like hours.

Shiro knew it wasn’t at all that long, but it was still too long not to be concerning when the heard the snarls and growls at the end of the hallway leading to the doorway they were looking for. Noises that were definitely not from the lions.

Slowing as they reached it, he pressed his normal hand onto the access matrix and swore when it gave a flat drone of denial. again, and again with his Galra hand too.

“Let me try! I have higher command access codes…” Allura said, quickly swapping their hands and opening up another console, quickly taping in a set of numbers as the machine scanned her palm. To her obvious dismay it droned again, and remained locked. “The hangar is in… lockdown? But that’s impossible! It can only be started from the bridge or through a voice key!”

Shiro felt realisation dawn and he nearly fell over from the realisation. “Not if Pidge hacked into the castleship command systems,” he said, voice faint. It was so obvious. It should have been obvious. He knew that heats and ruts didn’t limit the use of skills or the thought process, it just bent them away from anything other than the breeding cycle.

It should have been, so, so obvious as soon as he looked at the red warning screens on his tracker.

“But she was in the medical bay!” Allura protested.

And yet, Shiro had a feeling she wasn’t.

Growls and snarls echoed from inside the hangar, but it was dim. He could hear a little better as his hearing had picked up a lot of slack for his blind nose since escaping captivity, but not through the door itself.

“How long does it last?” he asked Allura. If they were desperate, he could always try using his Galra hand, but these doors were sturdier than usual, and he wasn’t sure even his arm would be able to get through them. “Can you contact Coran at all?”

“No, unfortunately. I’ve been trying for a while,” Allura said, her own voice frustrated as she typed into the console, frowning in concentration. “…I think it might lift in a few more minutes…” she said finally.

And so, with no other option they could think of, they anxiously waited.

* * *

Hunk didn’t so much as drop Pidge as she was wrenched from his grasp before he could say any two words about it. Quickly dropping any grip he had on her as Keith sprung back towards the nest with her fussing and nuzzling for a moment until she nuzzled back, reaffirming each other’s scents.

Once happy she was safe, those creepy glowing eyes–seriously, in the lockdown lights they were terrifying–locked back onto him, and he laughed awkwardly, baring his neck in submission.

“Hey, Keith, old buddy, old pal…” he said nervously as he rose from the nest with slow, deliberate footsteps.

The air was tense around them as the hangar flooded with the repelling scent of rut, and the challenge in it. Behind him Hunk could hear Lance choking in disgust at the scent, and Pidge was whimpering in her own distress, but none of that mattered.

If Keith was willing to put out a scent that his omega would hate to try to intimidate him, then Hunk needed to proceed very carefully. Omega fights were common, often decreed as chaotic and dangerous, but Alpha fights were too. They were simply rarer because a lot of them were initially subtle, and stopped before they became violent. The violent ones though? They were terrifying.

Shiro hadn't been lying about when they were in the Garrison. He’d heard that the fight in which Iverson lost his eye had been an alpha fight. One where Keith got hostile in an impromptu rut - that was why he had to be sedated, which was freaky as shit in real life on Earth.

Now it made sense-the Galra were an active race with similar dynamics and bodies hardwired for more… fierce courting demonstrations and defensive processes, and Keith was half Galra (again, creepy glowing eyes). Of course he was more violent when he was in rut.

Hunk was counting on the fact that Keith would not want to expose Pidge to the scent of aggression for too long now that she was in full heat, and more vulnerable for too long, because if he had to actually fight Keith? He genuinely might break something. If not die.

He shrunk back, cowing his head and lowering his face, trying to appear as small and unthreatening as possible, much like Lance had done with Pidge. Keith had stopped too, not too far across from him, and he was exposing his neck, allowing Pidge’s scent combined with his own to come out.

He was broadcasting it, advertising that he was Pidge’s chosen alpha for her heat, that he had been given her trust, given the intimate responsibility of concern for her safety, that he was the one who would be caring for her; it mixed delicately into his own normal one, filling the room like honey and coconut and–oh god, it was amazing, ancients spare him, this really, _really_ was not the time for his knot to drop his load inside his boxers!

Sweat rolling down his neck, Hunk bit his lip furiously, hoping to god that his dick did not choose right there and then to explode, because if Keith could smell how horny he was right now, any chance of sliding this off was gone. He’d tear him to pieces!

Mentally explaining to his libido that _now was not a good time_ , he shook from the thick scent and hard tension in the air as Keith assessed his scent, trying to gauge if Hunk’s replying fragrance implied a threat. Hunk really, really hoped that the message that it was not was getting through.

He was trying to broadcast the scent he used with his family, one that had been used in their combined Voltron pack scent. Something platonic and familiar, that he would hopefully associate with good ‘ _not-trying-to-challenge-or-steal-nest_ ’ thoughts.

Keith snarled, taking a step closer–oh great, there were his fangs–and presumably catching onto the scent of arousal that was clear in his pants. Hunk whined placatingly, broadcasting more of the nice, soft, platonic pack smell as Keith stepped into his personal space, sniffing and grumbling with the scary teeth a clear warning.

A whine emanated from Pidge, the most well timed and perfect distraction that Keith could have been give; her voice called out, a sound that drew the alpha’s attention to her like a moth to a flame. Immediately, Keith snarled, his fangs hovering terrifyingly close to his neck in warning, before tuning and rushing back towards Pidge.

She was roosting in the scraped together nest she’d built again, arching her neck as he returned, inviting and welcoming and Keith purred soothingly. Pidge was in the full throes of her heat now–it was smelled amazing, and the noise she’d made was shooting through his poor knot with agonising precision– and she curled into Keith’s arms as he pulled her close, eyeing Hunk protectively, still baring his teeth. His eyes were calmer, or at least no longer on him as they flicked around the room.

This was where the lockdown was a problem; Pidge must have started it off when she set up the tracking system somehow–it was the only time Hunk could think of her having the rationale to do it–but now they were stuck, and there was no way either of them were going to nest or bond in a room with a hostile alpha and omega.

Hunk wasn’t exactly sure what they were supposed to do about that, but after fleeing towards the Yellow lion, he noticed that Keith was shuffling around intently around the nest, occasionally giving Pidge his attention with croons of reassurance, before he finally pulled up a sheet of… something. Hunk couldn’t be sure, it looked like a diagram of something, but what he couldn’t guess.

“Should we do something?” Lance whispered from his own hiding spot, behind the Lion’s next paw over.

Hunk shook his head very, very quickly, and then a rustle of movement drew their attention back to the nesting pair; Keith had finished whatever he was doing, and with one of the blankets, had carefully wrapped Pidge up and picked her up into a stable, one-armed grip which she supported by the curl of her arms and legs around his neck and back as he…

…climbed up the side of the green lion?

“Oh god, he isn’t…” Lance croaked.

“…I think he is,” Hunk whispered back, watching as Keith paused, watching around with the preening omega in his hold tucked safely by his side, before resuming his climb up to the top of Greenie’s head. Then, to Hunk’s horror, he jumped across the intervening gap towards one of the maintenance shelves at the side of the hangar.

“Are they even big enough for both of them?” Lance asked.

“Depends on the route but if I can fit in it then they can…” Hunk choked, his eyes following Keith and Pidge as they made their ascent.

They reached the shelf, and as Keith rushed along it, Pidge angled herself onto his back, clinging around his neck like a spider monkey as he jumped up onto one of the vast columns, and began to climb using his blade knife and a shortened version of his paladin bayard like ice picks to pull them towards the air vent near the ceiling.

Hunk was so busy staring–unsure if he was amazed or horrified– that he almost missed the hiss of the air pistons that sounded the door opening,

“What’s going on?!” their former leader blurted when he and Allura rushed into the room.

The exclamation stopped them all in their tracks Keith included, Pidge peering down over his shoulder, eyes narrowed on the two new invaders.Hunk and Lance exchanged a look–that was a question they were both still asking themselves–but could only point at the shaft.

Hunk had never quite seen that expression on Shiro’s face as he stared up at his protégé, all Galra eyes and fangs and claws and scaling a wall with his knives, and hormone-drunk Pidge crooning into his back, glaring down upon them all.

Pidge hissed once, and at her display Keith quickly scampered the remaining distance up the column, wrenched the hatch off the duct, and disappeared into the castleship ventilation system.

The hatch clanged and the metal screeched as it sparked on the floor of the hangar when it landed, cutting through the stunned silence and dredges of scent that still lingered in the hangar.

Shiro stared at the two of them expectantly.

Hunk pointed at Lance. “Lance scented Keith and Pidge hacked the entire castle.”

“Dude, I told you it was an accident!” Lance choked. “You were the one who grabbed Pidge and set Keith off into Galra mode, Mr. I’m-Attracted-To-Combined-Scents!”

“Both of you shut up! This isn’t helping!” Shiro snapped. Before taking a breath. “Hunk, do you think you can get back into the computer systems from the bridge?”

“Maybe with Coran,” Hunk said, scratching the back of his head. “But I don’t think we can really separate them now.”

“I have a feeling you’re right, but we should still try to keep an eye on them” Shiro sighed, then nodded again. “But we really do need someone to tell us what the hell is going on.”

* * *

 

 **Next time, on _'HOW NOT TO GET LAID IN SPACE ABO'_ :** what everybody is actually here for, which is the lemonade  ~~and some ice for Hunk's dick~~.

Massive hugs and thank yous to KDXArt for being my sounding-board, idea person and fucking-spell-right-Natalie person <3 this insanity would not exist without her.


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